


There there baby it's just textbook stuff

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt proposes to Karen, but she says no because their relationship has been difficult for them both to handle. After getting rejected, Matt gets depressed for months until they meet again, months later, to realise that they should never be apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There there baby it's just textbook stuff

He’d never thought it would happen with her. 

It’s a good idea he didn’t do the flashmob thing (Arthur talked him out of it, thank god) and just decided to cook Karen dinner the night after she landed in London. 

So now he’s down on one knee in front of her, and she’s shocked but not the good kind of shocked, and is sitting there shaking her head. 

He’s equally surprised. 

“Why?” He asks, because he hadn’t really thought through any reasons why she’d say no. 

“Get up,” she says, “you look ridiculous.” 

Being on one knee is also incredibly uncomfortable, as he’s recently discovered.

He sits across from her at his dining room table and she looks sad and confused, and he wants to reach out a hand to her or hug her or something, but that seems oddly inappropriate right now. 

“Why, Kaz?”he asks, trying to understand why this perfect thing they have just spectacularly derailed. 

“I - I - Matt, I can’t even believe that you asked in the first place,” Karen says, looking down. “We’re never together. We’re on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean most of the time. Have we ever even lived together for longer than three months?” 

Matt thinks about this. “Yeah, I don’t think we have.” She’s right. Karen is usually right about things. “I guess I just thought that we could try.” 

“I don’t think getting married is a good first time to try, Matt.” 

Yeah. That’s more sensible than romantic. He suddenly gets a thought that is so horrifying to him that he almost can’t put it in to words. 

“Karen,” he says cautiously, “did you come here to break up with me?” 

She puts her head in her hands, and doesn’t do anything for a few seconds, and then nods. 

Well, shit.

“It’s not working Matt!” She yells, and looks at him with a pained expression. “Spending a week or a month together here and there isn’t a relationship. We can’t commit to each other right now, Matt!”

He shakes his head and points at the little velvet box. “I would disagree. And that doesn’t mean that we can’t commit to each other ever.”

“Oh shut up -”

“I would follow you to the ends of the fucking earth, Kaz,” he says. “I would. I honestly would. I’d stop working, I’d drop everything just to be with you right now.”

She stands up and points at him accusingly. Her accent has become significantly stronger, which is usually a sign of extreme rage. “You do not get to make this all about me, Matt, okay? This is not all on me, this is on both of us.” She exhales sharply, and looks up at the ceiling and then back at Matt. “I get so depressed after you go back to wherever you’re filming from Los Angeles that I cannot function for several days after, Matt. So it’s not that I don’t love, it’s actually quite the fucking opposite. I can’t handle being apart, Matt. But we’re not going to stop being apart, and I can’t deal with the separation and coming back together anymore.”

She’s right. She is so fucking right that he almost can’t handle it, because he knows those feelings of helplessness and homesickness when he’s not around her. Putting a ring on it isn’t going to help it. 

“I’m sorry, Kaz,” he says quietly. “You’re right.” 

There’s really nothing more to say, because it’s done. It’s over. A shitty ending to go with a really good beginning and middle. 

“I’m, uh, I’m going to change my train ticket,” she says. “There’s an overnighter up to Edinburgh that leaves in a few hours. I’ll see if I can get on it. I was planning on going home for a while during this visit anyways.” 

“Okay.” 

She goes and sits on his couch and starts clicking away, and he sits at the table and stares quite intently at the pattern on the placemats. She rings what he’s guessing is a taxi, and then gets up and walks over to him. 

“I’m gonna go,” Karen says. “I called a cab. It’ll be here soon.” 

“I’ll help you with your bags,” Matt replies, and gets up and grabs one of her suitcases. She opens her mouth and then he says, “Just let me do this one last thing, Kaz.”

They make their way down to the lobby of Matt’s building, and wait for the taxi in silence. Karen’s doing the thing where she keeps this ramrod straight posture and a super neutral expression on her face, which makes her look okay, but Matt catches the fact that there’s a storm of emotion in her eyes and her lower lip trembles slightly. 

The cab pulls up, and they turn to each other, but it’s awkward and weird and argh, breaking up was never supposed to be this bad. 

“Goodbye?” Matt says. He has literally no idea what he’s supposed to do right now. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Karen says sadly. “Bye, Matt.” She grabs the suitcase from him, and wheels her bags out the door to the waiting cab. 

He goes back up to his flat, and while there’s a part of him that wants to turn in to a giant ball of rage and smash everything and then go and find the deepest crack in the earth to throw the ring in to, he curls up on the couch and stares at the floor for a while, then packs up the table. 

He leaves the engagement ring on his nightstand.

* * *

He spends the next few weeks trying to analyse where things went wrong with Karen. He tries to pinpoint the precise moment where things tipped from happy to sad, and comes up remarkably empty.   

The sadness that previously would hold him for a few days after Karen went back to Los Angeles grips him hard and settles in his bones. Every step feels like agony, and there are days where he wakes up and then curses because he’s still fucking there and she’s not and it just hurts far too much to be legal or okay. 

He doesn’t get over it - he gets used to it. Used to laughing less, spending more nights in, and being broody beyond the point where broody was hot.  

He and Daisy get back together briefly, but she sees the ring one day (though it’s moved from the nightstand to the sock drawer) and she knows that Karen’s still got an iron hold on his heart, and then she goes too. 

He actively avoids the Nerdist and anything that could possibly remind him of Karen, though that’s hard because literally every time he walks around London he thinks,  _oh, that’s that Costa where we agreed the coffee was the strongest_ or  _that’s the best place to get takeaway when she’s staying at my flat._ Everything he owns, everywhere he’s been, and everything that he’s felt is twisted up too intimately with her. 

It makes him want to hurt something. 

* * *

It is to his great shock that he finds her waiting patiently on his couch when he comes home from filming in Cardiff for a week. 

She just looks at him as if there’s nothing wrong. “I still have my key,” she says casually. She’s got a cup of tea in her favourite mug sitting on the coffee table. “You never asked for it back.” 

Oh. Right.

“Hi,” Matt says, because she still takes the words away from him and probably always will. 

They stare at each other for about a minute, because  _Jesus Christ what is she doing here I thought we ended things six months ago literally what is happening._

“Sit,” Karen says, and he does, taking up residence in one of the armchairs across from her and wondering what right she has to invite him to sit in his own damn living room. 

“What are you doing back here, Karen?” He asks, because he is eighty percent confused, ten percent angry, and ten percent secretly overjoyed. In any event, his heart feels like it’s going to explode out of his chest at any moment because it’s thumping so hard. 

“I missed you,” she says. 

“Missed you too.” Well, yeah, that’s what been making him upset and angry and apathetic these past few months - he’s missed her. He doesn’t want to be without her. 

She looks to the side, and then says, “I tried dating while I was back in Los Angeles, but I didn’t really give anyone a chance, because I spent all of my time thinking about you and none of them could ever measure up.”  _  
_

He nods. “I got back with Daisy.”

“I heard it didn’t last long.” 

“She found the ring,” Matt says. “That’s why she left again.” 

“What ring?” 

“The one I meant to give to you.” 

Karen puts her head in her hands. 

“It isn’t your fault, Kazza,” he says, and sort of enjoys the way that her old nickname just slides off of his tongue and feels ten times more natural than trying call her Karen. “I was holding on to you when I probably should have let go, though.” 

“I’m happy you didn’t let go,” she says, and has tears in her eyes. “I signed on to a BBC series, and all of my stuff in the US is done for a while. Like, forever if I feel like it.” 

“Oh,” Matt says, and his heart swells with joy. “That’s good.” 

“You know I never stopped loving you, right?” 

“Me neither, Kaz.” 

“I guess,” she says, a little hesitantly, “I just want to start over. We blew things up a few months ago, I know that, but you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and suddenly I was faced with the prospect of losing you forever, and I couldn’t do that, Matt. I just, I just couldn’t.” She wipes the tears away from her eyes. 

Matt gets up then and sits beside Karen on the couch, and pulls her in for a hug. He starts crying then too. 

They pull apart, and Karen laughs a little. 

“Good to be back?” He asks. He’s sure happy about it. 

She nods. “The best.” 

“If you want to do this,” Matt says, “We can do this.” 

“Yeah,” she says. “Because I love you and I know it’ll take a while to get back to where we were, Matt, but I want to get there.” 

“Well,” he says, actually smiling for the first time in months, “the ring’s there when you want it.” 

 


End file.
